Machines For Living

Question 1

How did Le Corbusier view housing?

Answer 1

As Machines for living

Question 2

What did Le Corbusier reject?

Answer 2

Streets

Recast as expressways, replaced by universal parkland and high apartment blocks

Question 3

What did Le Corbusier rationalise?

Answer 3

Rationalise domino concrete house

Question 4

What was Le Corbusier aesthetic influenced by?

Answer 4

Industrial forms

Question 5

A contemporary city of 3 million people?

Answer 5

To be built on left bank of Paris- existing buildings demolished
Symmetrical grid pattern of skyscrapers
Increasing the density of cities
Vertical construction

Question 6

Zoning visions?

Answer 6

Luxury apartments for elite
Satellite garden apartments for working class
Central City compact and lively
Business skyscrapers with great open spaces
Great public buildings
Zone of woods and fields between centre and periphery
Rapid transit via elevated expressway

Question 7

The radiant city?

Answer 7

Argued for complete demolition of existing city centres
Repetition and standard
Everyone will live in collective apartments

Question 8

Modernism in Britain example?

Answer 8

Heygate estate London

‘Estate from hell’

Question 9

Henry Ford?

Answer 9

Ford formed Detroit Automobile company 1899
Fords novelty lies in industrial organisation
Detroit developed mass production
Precise fooling and systematisation enabled production of 100 cars a day

Question 10

The assembly line?

Answer 10

Organisation of man, machine and material into one productive whole 
Coordination of workers
Continuous motion 
Unskilled labour unlike European rivals
Financed by profits not borrowing

Question 11

Making of men?

Answer 11

10% Absent a day 
Incentive wage- 5$ for 8 hours 
Self regulating service- workers purchased the goods they made 
Disciplined non hierarchy 
Utopian

Question 12

Social effects on employees?

Answer 12

Discouraged drinking, smoking and gambling
Promoted cleanliness
Inspectors encouraged workers to buy vacuum cleaners and washing machines

Question 13

Ruins of the dream?

Answer 13

Competition- increasing speed to increase productivity
Violent struggle against unionism
Constant surveillance of workers
1/3 workers an informer
Workers banned from drinking alcohol in their own homes and forced to buy a ford car

Question 14

Only a story of the past?

Answer 14

Foxconn- iPhone manufacturer
Walled estates
12 hour shifts
Free housing but expensive utility bills
No speaking
Resulted in 2010- 18 suicides on assembly line